the sagarmatha girls won their first soccer game 5-0!
after nearly 6 weeks of searching for another girls team to play we finally found one! last friday afternoon we played the international school. at first the kopila girls were really intimidated because they were all wearing lip stick. my girls said “o my they’re so grown up we are going to die” i told them if my team ever played another team that was wearing lip stick we’d all laugh and say “this will be easy.” even though our girls were nervous it definitely did not show on the field. they dominated and were so aggressive i kind of felt bad for the other team. i had to remind players like Sungita and Manisha that you can’t just throw other players on the ground to get the ball. but honestly i was proud of how far they’ve come. now they are beyond confident. to think the first day we practiced they would trap the ball with their hands and stop if they were about to bump into another player and now they have no problem with getting a little rough. they looked like an entirely new team. after the game i told them to show good sportsmanship and give high fives. but before we could say anything to the other team they all ran out of the school yard…i think they were just a little afraid of the sagarmatha.
even though winning the game made the perfect ending to my trip i have to say that overall these girls showed me that soccer is about the process and not necessarily the outcome. my coach at notre dame always says this and i roll my eyes- of course we want to win. but after coaching the girls for the summer i saw that it truly is about the process of becoming a team, having fun, forgetting about problems you have at home and laughing. i think everyone would agree with this but if you stop and think about it do you really love the process? of course i don’t love getting up early for 6am workouts or running sprints and i never will. but i think i’m not alone when i say we’ve never laughed so hard when someone accidentally wore their pajamas or passed out mid bike sprint during a 6am. i think this is the part of the process that makes the outcome ever so sweeter.
i really don’t know when these little girls will find another team in surkhet to play against but i do know that they’ll be out on that field every day after school playing soccer and laughing. i feel like the soccer field has become an extension of the classroom for them. they’re becoming these little confident leaders- i can see it when Sumjana dribbles full speed down the field, Susila punts the ball past half-field or when Goma shoots it harder than most boys can . it’s crazy how far they’ve all come in a few weeks, just think in 10 years who knows what they’ll be capable of accomplishing…
according to the nepalese calendar, sunday marked the start of a new month in the year 2068 as well as the holiday of Mehendi. for this entire month women and girls celebrate by drawing henna tattoos on their hands and feet.
today was teacher appreciation day! it was definitely a lot different than any teacher appreciation stuff i ever did in school. all of the teachers sat up on the stage while the students formed one very long line. the kids gave us flowers, candies and smeared tika on our entire face to show how thankful they are but really i think they were just loving the chance to make their teachers look ridiculous :)
a few days before i left for my trip to Kopila Valley I received a little envelope in the mail. inside was a crumpled note from one of the girls my team sponsors, Hima Tamata. the note read, “dear lindsay, i love you. heema and lindsay are best friends.” when i got here i couldn’t wait to finally meet hima, the girl i’ve been following on maggie’s blog for months(blinknow.org). before i could get a word out hima walked up to me and started singing “let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.” at first i had no idea what she was referrring to considering its around 90 degrees here everyday. then hima pulled out the christmas card that my notre dame friends and i sent her back in december. when you open the card it plays a christmas carol. hima had memorized the song and had even memorized the note i had written inside. she named each of the girls that had signed the card and asked “are these all my friends in america?” hima’s eyes got so big when i replied yes and all she could say back was “oh ma gawd.”
maggie found hima 5 years ago breaking rocks to sell to construction companies and rummaging through garbage to support her family. she has 3 brothers and her mother is widowed. maggie helped enroll hima into school for the first time in her entire life and her mom is working again. hima’s 12 years old now and in the second grade. when i’m with hima i forget how much she’s already been through. she’s such a happy, energetic, carefree girl. she cares so much about her family and is always telling me how proud she is of how hard her mom works.
hima has the biggest heart of anyone i know. i gave her a journal the first day we met so we can continue to write notes to each other once i go home. the other morning in class she took out the journal and gave me 8 notes, one for each of the girls that signed the christmas card. each said something like “dear maddie, i love you. my name is heema. i read in 2 class. my mom breaks rock. you are my best friend. heema loves maddie.” i read through each of the following notes addressed to jordan, britney, and a couple other girls but i stopped when i got to the last one, it read “dear dreams.” i couldn’t figure it out at first but then i realized the last sentenced i had written in the card was “follow your dreams!” hima had gotten confused and thought that “dreams” was one of her friends in america. i was about to break it to her that “dreams” really isn’t a person but then she turned to me and said, “i am so lucky to have 9 friends in america. i work hard in school so one day i come visit my friends and i see dreams” after taking a second to think about it i decided maybe hima is onto something after all. right now her friend “dreams” might not exist but hima’s right, if she keeps working hard in school one day “dreams” technically will be true.
boys trip to bul bule!
last friday i took the boys soccer team to bul bule because sometimes i think they don’t like me very much! now they have to share the soccer field with the girls and on the weekends i only take the girls on fun field trips. the boys always ask me why they can’t play soccer with us or why they can’t come on the trips. they don’t see that when they play with us, the girls get so shy and never even touch the ball. but i decided to try and make it up to them because i figure the boys will never even start to respect the girls if they resent them. at bul bule, the boys decided to play soccer in a rice paddy field and managed to pop the new ball by the end of the trip, guess you can say they had fun.
practice makes perfect…
i showed this quote to some of the kopila girls earlier today because i think it’s pretty powerful…but of course they just couldn’t seem to get past how short of shorts the girl is wearing (by now i should of known this would cause a riot). Hima kept covering her eyes and saying “o ma gawd, so naughty”. well, at least i tried.
sorry Bishal and Madan, you can run but you can’t hide! you crazy little monkeys have to learn your ABCS…
way to go Harimaya! Harimaya scored 1st in her class on last week’s english spelling quiz! (in nepal they don’t give letter grades or percentages on exams, instead they rank the kids 1st, 2nd, 3rd…)
i’m super proud of Harimaya because it’s only her second year here at Kopila and she is learning english so quickly! each school day, during 2nd period i sit in the library with Harimaya and a few other students and we practice spelling words. Harimaya has the prettiest green eyes and is one of the sweetest girls i’ve met here. she’s such a happy person so at first it was really hard for me to believe her when she told me she’s a servant and never has time to study outside of school or play with her friends. when i first got here, i would always ask her “can you come to soccer practice today?” everyday she would reply with the biggest smile “i have family emergency. i go home now.” after a few days, i decided to finally ask her what this family emergency was. she told me the family she works for just had a newborn baby that she’s in charge of taking care of. i asked if she liked the new baby and she giggled “no, it cries so much. i so tired and they say ‘harimaya, clean the baby’ so i cry and now me and baby cry together” she never stopped smiling and giggling the whole time she told me this- i just sat there nodding my head thinking “wow, at your age i’m pretty sure i rushed home to play with american girl dolls, you’re rushing home to take care of an actual baby and an entire household” talk about unfair.
last friday i had tea with the family Harimaya works for and told them all about the girls’ soccer team. i could tell harimaya was originally uncomfortable with me coming over but i really wanted to see what she goes home to everyday. it was hard for me to sit there while harimaya served us all then cleaned everything up while lugging around the baby. even though i wanted to be so mad at the family, i realized this is just how the way things are around here. luckily, harimaya’s such a positive person i know she will still do amazing in school despite having such a hard home life (if you can call it that).
now i’m really glad i visited the family and i think harimaya is too. this past week they actually let her stay late after school one time so she could go to soccer practice with the rest of her friends. when she told me the news earlier that day at school she had an even bigger smile on her face, something i didn’t think was possible. at practice, i could of cared less every time harimaya toe-poked the ball, just seeing her being able to act her own age and laughing for all the right reasons made me happy enough.
team trip to the goat temple!
even though 1st quarter exams start Sunday and we probably should have been studying, the soccer team and i made a trip to the “goat temple” on saturday morning. i figured the girls could use any extra help on their test so a temple visit couldn’t hurt anyone right?
all of the girls came over super early since you can’t eat before going to worship. the temple is pretty far from the kopila valley home so the girls told me the best way there would be a bus. well, the bus was more of a small pick-up truck with a tent over the truck bed. half of us squeezed in the back and the rest crowded inside the front with the driver-the team, me, and 3 new volunteers filled up the entire “bus” (or so i thought). as we started the bumpy drive more and more nepalis would jump in or onto the truck, at one point i had some random lady’s baby on my lap. we counted and they had fit 26 people into/onto the smallest “bus” i’d ever seen. once we were at the temple we all got tika on our foreheads. i then learned why it is called the goat temple- multiple goats were being sacrificed as we entered (thank god i hadn’t eaten yet). the girls took me around to the different shrines where we would burn incense, ring the bells, sprinkle flowers onto the shrine, and even leave a few rupees behind for the gods to collect themselves (a pretty impressive skill huh?). i really wish i had half a clue who or what i was worshiping to.
on the way home there were no buses passing by and i had been sick with the stomach flu all last week so there was no way i was going to walk miles back in 100 degree heat. one of the girls who doesn’t speak a lot of english pointed to a tractor driving up the road and said “bus”. considering we took a joke of a “bus” there I believed her so i put out my hand as if it were a taxi and the guy was nice enough to pull over. i jumped in the back of the tractor and then looked up to tell the girls to get on the bus. i realized all of their faces looked like mine does whenever my mom does something beyond embarrassing. it turns out the tractor was simply a tractor. the girls laughed so hard but before i could get out they all jumped in and off we went speeding down the road in the back of some random guy’s tractor- he didn’t even let me pay him for the ride. they were all singing and dancing around, it reminded me of my friends whenever we take party buses to events- the only difference being we were standing in the back of a tractor- only in surkhet would this happen.
i especially loved this little team bonding trip because religion here in nepal is beyond fascinating. i wish i understood it better. it truly dictates every day life and how people interact with one another. religion means so much to these girls and they take it so seriously. it’s really cool to me that they wanted to share this with me and i’m happy that i was able to learn even more about who these girls are outside of school.
